Sphere maps are special textures that contain an
image of the scene surrounding an object, or the lighting effects around the
object. Unlike cubic environment maps, sphere maps don't directly represent an
object's surroundings. A sphere map is a 2-D
representation of the full 360-degree view of the scene surrounding of an
object, as if taken through a fish-eye lens, see the following illustration:

There are three shader files for sphere map in Awakening's
effects\spheremap folder:Spheremap.sha, SpheremapDiffuse.sha, SpheremapTexAlphaBlend.sha.